In a time division multiple access (TDMA) optical system which comprises multiple optical devices transmitting toward a single optical receiver, each optical device transmits by bursting its information onto the common physical medium. Transmissions from different sources are made possible by offsetting, in time, the burst from each device so that none of the bursts overlaps, in time, with any other burst from any source. Otherwise, the transmissions from two or more devices could collide at some common point in the network, causing loss of data. The time allocated for a single burst of data from a given transmitter is referred to as a “timeslot”.
In the current network environment, telecommunications service providers typically deploy services using SONET/SDH add/drop multiplexers. To provide redundancy protection, the SONET/SDH elements are arranged in ring configurations which provide line or path protection switching. In such protection switching schemes, the data that is transmitted on a working path is independent and unsynchronized with respect to data that is transmitted on a protection path. Generally, in order to not incur data loss in a failure situation, this requires that multiple timeslots or frames from each path or line be stored in a buffer prior to performing an analysis of which data is valid and which is corrupted. Such buffering adds undesirable complexity and latency to the system. Most often, communication systems incur data loss for some period of time, e.g., 50 ms in a SONET network, prior to recovering full error-free transmission.